<\/p>\n
How did you get started as a translator, and why science fiction?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I had just started working at Tel Aviv University and the salary wasn\u2019t that great, so I was looking for some extra income on the side. Through a family friend at Am Oved Publishers, I started getting offers to translate books. When Am Oved began publishing its \u201cWhite Series\u201d of science fiction books [named for the white paperback covers \u2013 Ed.], I told the publishers that I wanted to translate books for this series. Their answer was: \u201cYou\u2019re a serious person. What\u2019s a serious person like you doing with this nonsense?\u201d But, one day, the editorial secretary called me and told me that they were interested in translating a book called Dune<\/em>. Naturally, I agreed at once. I was familiar with it since it was a book I really liked. That was in 1976.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n How do you approach the work of translation?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n When the opportunity arose to translate Dune<\/em>, I was already working at the Center for Political Research and Planning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was a civilian intelligence analysis body within the Foreign Ministry, set up following the Agranat report [commissioned by the Israeli government to assess failings during the Yom Kippur War \u2013 Ed.]. We worked from an off-site campus where there were lots of young and lively people. The atmosphere was one you would associate more with university student life than with the usual image of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. I discovered that many of my coworkers were science fiction fans. After I\u2019d got the call from Am Oved, during the morning coffee break in the cafeteria, I told them about the book I was going to translate. They were very excited, immediately offering to help. So I delegated a few of the tasks involved in the translation. \u00a0The late Meron Gordon, who eventually became ambassador to Warsaw and Moscow, took it upon himself to find the verses from the Bible that appeared in the book, so that we wouldn\u2019t end up translating the Bible into Hebrew. Erella Hadar, who later became ambassador to Prague, undertook to translate concepts from the feudal period that also appeared in the book. David Matnai, later ambassador to several countries in Southeast Asia and an expert in classical Arabic, agreed to correct some phrases in Arabic that were inaccurate in the original version.<\/p>\n I typed out the translation of the book by hand, and then the secretaries at the Center happily typed \u00a0a clean copy\u2014on a typewriter; back then, there were no computers or word processors. The order of work went like this: I translated, my colleagues commented and corrected, and then a final copy was made, which I submitted to Am Oved. Not only do I thank them on the first page of the Hebrew version, but the sharp-eyed reader will notice that in one of the appendices at the end of the book, which describes the establishment of a certain religious council, I used for it the acronym of the organization we were working for at the time.<\/p>\n In an interview with <\/em><\/strong>Haaretz, you mentioned that this is one of your three favorite science fiction books. What is it about this book that you like so much?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The book\u2019s psychological depth, the breadth of the plot, and the character development. Science fiction from the 1940s and 1950s is still my favorite, but the characters are usually two-dimensional and lacking in depth and development. In Dune<\/em>, the reader follows the development of the characters, and as the book progresses, you discover more and more layers to them. This is some true artistry from Frank Herbert. I especially like the idea of \u200b\u200bwhat foresight means. Let me explain: there is a character who can see the future, but what he sees it in a similar way to Borges\u2019 The Garden of Forking Paths<\/em>. He sees the paths and wants to choose one path or avoid the other\u2014and without giving away too much, because I don\u2019t like spoilers\u2014his dilemma is about choosing the right path, when in the middle there is an abyss, and he can\u2019t see where the paths split. It\u2019s not a self-fulfilling prophecy; foresight is a much more complicated and deep phenomenon.<\/p>\n Can the person who \u201csees the futures\u201d choose the right future? That\u2019s the book\u2019s big question.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What were the challenges you faced in translating? I understand you had a difficult task adapting the book into Hebrew.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n In today\u2019s computer age, I can correspond with authors and ask them questions. Back then, we never met. What were the challenges? To replicate the book\u2019s depth. It\u2019s easy to do a superficial, literal translation, but if you want to do it well and capture the book\u2019s psychological depth, you need to put in more effort. On the other hand, the mysticism in the book translates well from one language to another. It\u2019s often challenging to translate Hindu or even Christian mysticism, and you need to think about how to convey the spirit of the text without getting into Jewish mysticism, because that\u2019s not the author\u2019s intention. In this case, the mysticism is Muslim-Jewish. There\u2019s a character who is described as the \u00a0 \u201cKwisatz Haderach\u201d [kfitzat haderekh<\/em> is a Kabbalistic concept in Hebrew meaning a miraculous leap from one place to another – CM], so in this respect, I was on solid footing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n How is the original different from the Hebrew translation? Obviously, you didn\u2019t touch the plot<\/em><\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n The Arabic in the original book was not very accurate, and as I mentioned before, David Matnai helped me a lot with this. For example, pretty much in the beginning of the book, the main character Paul arouses the admiration of another character who comes to investigate and discover who he is, and she utters a cry of wonder and admiration\u2014kul wahad!<\/em> Kul wahad<\/em> is not an exclamation of admiration in Arabic. Matnai gave me a better word expressing admiration in Arabic\u2014aj\u2019aib<\/em>\u2014which means \u00a0\u201cwonder of wonders!\u201d There are a number of little examples like that throughout the book.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Can one translate a book one doesn\u2019t necessarily like?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I try not to. The choice is a little more limited today. I used to be able to pass on something like that if it came up. In principle, one can translate a book one doesn\u2019t like, because the work of translating is, at its core, technical. Art comes on top of the technique. With Frank Herbert, I went to great lengths to ensure that if there were mistakes, they would be corrected in the Hebrew. There were books where I didn\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What do you read in your spare time?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I read mostly science fiction, but also fantasy. I have a problem with the fantasy genre, though. For me, everything written after Tolkien\u2014it\u2019s just not the same. Here and there, you find a pearl.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To this day one hears things like \u201cIf it\u2019s fantasy or science fiction, I\u2019m not reading it.\u201d Do you feel that even today the perception is that these are inferior genres, and that perhaps the boundaries of the fantasy \u00a0\u201cghetto\u201d have not yet been breached?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The fantastic genres emerged from the literary ghetto largely thanks to Ursula K. Le Guin. The older generation in Israel, the generation that believed that books had a mission\u2014Zionism first and foremost, of course\u2014that generation saw science fiction as a waste of time. They didn\u2019t consider, for example, that Altneuland<\/em> [a utopian novel written by Theodor Herzl in 1902 \u2013 Ed.] is a science fiction story. And when asked what about 1984<\/em>, and Brave New World<\/em>\u2014they would say that it was \u00a0\u201cfine literature\u201d, not science fiction.<\/p>\n This feeling has slowly been fading in recent years. If it could be said about Ursula K. Le Guin in the 1980s, then in Israel it could only be said in the 2000s, now that original and respected writers like Shimon Adaf are writing fantasy. Perhaps Adaf is our Le Guin.<\/p>\n Science fiction is no longer ridiculed in Israel. This, by the way, is why science fiction enthusiasts tend to organize and meet at conferences\u2014to spend time with like-minded people a few days a year, who love what they love and who don\u2019t look down on them. When I was still chair of the science fiction society, I would hear things like \u201cninety percent of science fiction is garbage.\u201d It really made me angry, and I felt that because of my position I had to respond. Then I thought to myself, if it\u2019s only ninety percent, then we\u2019re in pretty good shape compared to general literature.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What translation are you most proud of?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n No question at all, The Lord of the Rings<\/em> and its various sequels\u2014including most other J. R. R. Tolkien books that appeared in Hebrew. Some of these works were originally published in English only recently, not just the Hebrew translations. We have yet to see another writer of Tolkien\u2019s stature. There hasn\u2019t been another and I hope there will be, but I cannot see where they might come from. He was a singular, unique writer in his generation, in every sense. For me, he was everything. \u00a0It was an honor to translate his work into Hebrew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new cinematic adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic was a great opportunity to speak with Emanuel Lottem, who translated Dune into Hebrew. The result was a fascinating conversation about fantasy literature in Israel and how Lottem came to translate the book while enlisting the help of his colleagues at the Foreign Ministry\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":110249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[1914,1680,1679],"tags2":[],"class_list":["post-110827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-land-of-israel","tag-hebrew","tag-jewish-mysticism","tag-kabbalah"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/dune-lede-2-1300x650-1.jpeg\")